Mulayam after Muzaffarnagar

Later this month, the Left is organizing a convention in Delhi, where Mulayam Singh Yadav, the leader of UP’s Samajwadi Party, JD(U) chief and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and BJD boss and Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik, are expected to be present. This has sparked rumours of the emergence of a Third Front before elections, which our editorial today argues, is unlikely.

Frankly, the Left no longer trusts Mulayam Singh. When our comrades threw a tantrum over the Indo-US nuclear deal in 2008 and walked out of the UPA-I coalition, they expected the government to fall. After all, the Congress had less than 150 Lok Sabha seats and the Left had its highest tally in history: 61. But the government did not fall, because Mulayam stepped in with his MPs to prop up the government till elections were held in April-May 2009.

But the Left – and many other parties – have suddenly become queasy about Mulayam and the Samajwadi Party’s shifty politics. That unease began soon after the Samajwadi came to power last year. It has turned to revulsion with the Muzaffarnagar riots, which began with clashes on August 27, and took nearly a month to control. The military had to be called out, the first time since riots raged in the state after the demolition of the Babri masjid in December, 1992.

The British administration was taken by surprise by the Uprising of 1857. Soon after, when the Crown took over the administration of India from the East India Company, it designed an efficient network of thanas and local administrative bodies across the country. The objective was to ensure that any organized violence would be quelled by the state within 48 hours.

It worked then, and it works reasonably well even today in most parts of India. Therefore, if you hear of any incident of violence or rioting persisting beyond 48 hours, then the state is likely to have a hand in keeping it going. That is what happened in Gujarat, in 2002. And that is what could have happened in Muzaffarnagar.

Many will find this counter-intuitive: after all Mulayam Singh’s entire political career has been forged on stoutly opposing the Ram campaign led by the BJP’s L K Advani in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He is seen as a messiah and protector of Muslims, a tag he cherishes and hopes to win elections with. Why would his administration tolerate riots, which hurt minorities more in terms of lives and livelihoods lost?

Why did an administration, which could have nipped the whole thing in the bud, take three weeks to get its act together?

The answer is that UP’s administrative mechanism was systematically dismantled soon after the Samajwadi came to power in 2012. This was done to let Yadavs vent their ire on Dalits, based on some sense of grievance accumulated through the previous five years, when Mayawati’s BSP was in power.

Everybody agrees that Mayawati ran a tight ship, cleaned up UP’s administration and imposed the rule of law that had gone missing during the SP’s earlier, chaotic rule. She brought in efficient, hard working officers and posted them in critical areas. And she brought other backward caste (OBC) warlords to heel.

As crime fell, earnings from criminality also plummeted. This was bitterly resented by groups that thrived during Samajwadi’s anarchic rule earlier. Eventually, in 2012, Mayawati was voted out and the Samajwadi voted back to power. This sweep was based on the youthful charm of Mulayam’s son Akhilesh, who led a campaign based on laptops and cycles for students.

That optimism was premature. Akhilesh could have been a fresh face, but the Samajwadi had not changed its stripes. The immediate reprisals were on Dalits: since the Samajwadi came to power in 2012, UP has witnessed more than 100 riots.

But to let the hooliganism happen, inconveniences like good policemen and bureaucrats had to be got out of the way.

This paved the way to what happened in Muzaffarnagar. Once an efficient administrative machinery is dismantled and transferred to punishment postings, it cannot be ordered back up overnight.

Paul R Brass, a professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, has spent a lifetime studying riots in India. He does not believe that riots occur out of thin air or as a spontaneous reaction to some event.

Brass argues that riot-prone areas like Aligarh and Meerut have what he calls, “institutionalized systems of riot productions” (IRP). These are carefully nurtured by interest groups and politicians who benefit from riots, and unleashed during political mobilisation and elections.

As Mulayam dithered over Muzaffarnagar, the IRPs of western UP were mobilised and very soon, took charge of the rape and slaughter that took place last month. Two things, the presence of IRPs and the emasculation of the administration for petty gains led to Muzaffarnagar.

And, Mulayam Singh will pay a very high price for it. Today, Muslims no longer trust him the way they did in the past. And with elections approaching in six months, other political parties will find it unpalatable to form any alliance with his party.